June 26, 2020
Faculty Improvement Initiatives
Over the summer faculty will be educating themselves with respect to-
Depth and Scope of the Problem
– 13th Documentary
– White Fragility
Recognize your own emotional response and role
– Continuation of White Fragility
– White Allyship
Intent vs. Impact (responsibility for the impact)
– Microagressions
– Power dynamics as they relate to microagressions
Accountability of Self
– Intersectionality
– Structures we perpetuate (social contracts)
Peer group accountability – bystander intervention skills and techniques.
– Interrupting racist systems
– Confronting racist commentary
And here are some of the resources they will be interacting with.
Race and Feminism – quick overview of historical tensions
Faculty will also spend some time on action items. Yesterday we identified four areas we will work on improving through the summer. We also identified point persons to organize efforts. In two weeks each group will report back to the whole group on progress. Feel free to reach out directly to point persons, and we will be reaching out to the community for engagement. As a reminder “action” items identified by DEI based on their meetings with the community can be found at https://github.com/OARS-SAFS/DEI/issues
and some initiatives already have Projects (kanban-style boards) set up: https://github.com/OARS-SAFS/DEI/projects
List of 4 Focus Areas
- Departmental Governance around DEI (point- Andre)
- Recruitment (point- Mark)
- Retention (Welcoming Environment) (point- Steven)
- Integrating considerations of DEI into our teaching (point- Luke)
Thanks for everyones’ time, effort, and willingness talk about these topics.